quotations about failure
Many people are afraid to fail, so they don't try. They may dream, talk, and even plan, but they don't take that critical step of putting their money and their effort on the line. To succeed in business, you must take risks. Even if you fail, that's how you learn. There has never been, and will never be, an Olympic skater who didn't fall on the ice.
DONALD TRUMP
Trump 101
Failure is an event, it is not a person -- yesterday ended last night.
ZIG ZIGLAR
See You at the Top
Hast thou fallen? Do not groan and lament: rather be thankful for the opportunity given thee to rise once more.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
The greatest successes grow out of great failures. In numerous instances the result is better that comes after a series of abortive experiences than it would have been if it had come at once; for all these successive failures induce a skill which is so much additional power working into the final achievement.... The hand that evokes such perfect music from the instrument has often failed in its touch, and bungled among the keys.... Every disappointed effort fences in and indicates the only possible path of success, and makes it easier to find.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Success is somebody else's failure.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Dancing at the Edge of the World
Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
"A Chapter of Erie", North American Review, July 1869
Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.
BILL WILSON
As Bill Sees It
A common tendency is to set an almost unreachable standard for success while simultaneously creating a standard for failure that is easy to meet. As a result, you may routinely feel a lot less successful than is necessary.
TOMMY NEWBERRY
Success Is Not an Accident
Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul,", The Varieties of Religious Experience
Defeats and failures are great developers of character. They have made the giants of our race by giving Titanic muscles, brawny sinews, and far-reaching intellects.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Failure sometimes enlarges the spirit. You have to fall back upon humanity and God.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Life and the Student
About the only problem with success is that it does not teach you how to deal with failure.
TOMMY LASORDA
Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Jul. 12, 2006
Failure has been correctly identified as the line of least persistence.
ZIG ZIGLAR
See You at the Top
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
THOMAS EDISON
attributed, From Telegraph to Light Bulb with Thomas Edison (Hedstrom)
So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success.
TOM ROBBINS
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
People tend to grow fearful, when they taste failure, face a daunting challenge or fall ill. Yet, that is precisely the time to become even bolder. Those who are victors at heart are the greatest of all champions!!!!
CARMELO ANTHONY
Twitter post, Aug. 15, 2013
It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.
WILLA CATHER
"The Burglar's Christmas,", Home Monthly, Dec. 1896
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Summing Up
If you must fail ... fail spectacularly!
RANSOM RIGGS
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children